Fun with Tea Patents 1

I’ve written about tea patents at this site more times than I can count. If you’re wondering how many tea-related patents there are, the answer is: I don’t know. But there are certainly a lot. So many, in fact, that we’ve decided to start highlighting them on a regular basis, in a monthly column. So here we go.

Have you ever wished for a beverage that combined the best qualities of wine and tea? Me neither. But one inventor recently devised a Method for Producing a Red Grape Tea-like Composition made from red grapes. The claim is that “once brewed, steeped within hot water, tasteful to ingest as herb tea, and that complementary contains antioxidants, Catechin, Resveratrol, Tannin, Quercetin bearing anti-inflammatory and blood glucose lowering capacities; as well as a human skin rejuvenating natural product derived there from.” Which sounds well and good but I’ll probably stick with “real” tea for now.

This one’s also not about tea in the strictest sense of the word, but it’s interesting and close enough that I thought I’d share. It’s a 2005 patent for a Vending Machine for Oriental Tea and Method for Vending the Tea. Oriental tea apparently referring to herbal and/or medicinal teas, rather than Camellia sinensis or “real” tea. Why we need a vending machine specific to this type of tea is not for me to say.

What’s more interesting is the description of the device, which “comprises a monitor, a monetary detection part, a pulse detection part detecting the user’s pulse, an iris photograph part for photographing the user’s iris, an oriental tea selection switch, a data input part, a controller for deciding the health condition of the user, a plurality of oriental medicine material storage barrel, discharge controlling part, and a mix and heat part for mixing and heating a certain water and various oriental medicine tea.”

Finally, there’s an invention for those of you who have been wondering what to do with your tea dregs, or who didn’t even know there was such a thing (unlike our Esteemed Editor, who wrote about them here). It’s called Absorber Comprising Pulp, Tea Dregs and Water Absorbent Resin; Sanitary Articles Using the Absorber and Production Method Thereof. The purpose of all of this, says the patent, is “for water-absorbing, drying, and odor-eliminating with good visual quality, and maintaining sanitary conditions, and sanitary articles using the absorber.”